1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to an electronic market and, in particular, to a method, system, and program for managing inventory purchases. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method, system and program for improving efficiencies in cost and time for inventory purchases according to inventory needs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many retailers are now providing on-line store services via a web site where the user can search for products according to multiple types of criteria, such as by name or by category. These on-line stores may even provide for a user to register with the web site and provide product preferences. For example, a user may register with a web site for food-related products and include a preference for fresh pineapple by a particular fruit provider.
However, while on-line store services may be queried according to criteria designated by the user, typical on-line store services function independent of one another. Therefore, comparisons of prices for a product available at multiple on-line stores must typically be performed by a bot (short for robot) program that searches multiple web sites for a particular product and stores the responses in databases or an automatic record-keeping system. Multiple bot applications are now accessible at on-line search engines, such as yahoo.com and lycos.com. In addition, local bot applications that function on a user""s local computer are provided, such as a shopbot described in an International Application with International Publication Number WO 98/32289, where multiple on-line stores are queried with specific query data from a locally operating shop bot application.
In addition, while comparison shopping between on-line stores may be performed by an on-line search engine or locally functioning bot application, in the area of home inventory management, typical on-line store services do not monitor inventory that is needed for a particular home according to meal plan schedules, seasonal inventory preferences, food inventory preferences of occupants of the home, etc. In addition, typical bot applications require that such home inventory information be manually input by a user and a search queried.
However, it would be advantageous to monitor and manage home inventory for a particular household, by a computer system that automatically performs comparison shopping between multiple on-line retailers for inventory needs of the particular household. In addition, it would be advantageous to automatically purchase products when cost effective product specials are provided by on-line retailers.
In view of the foregoing, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved electronic market system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved method, system and program managing inventory purchases.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an improved method, system and program for maximizing cost and time efficiency for inventory purchases according to inventory needs.
In accordance with the present invention, absent items from an intended inventory are monitored at a computer system. Search requests for the absent items are automatically transmitted from the computer system to multiple independent product databases each respectively associated with one of multiple retailers. Offers are returned from multiple retailers to the computer system, such that inventory purchases for the particular household are managed by the computer system.
All objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent in the following detailed written description.